ArticlesDoes the Quality of Democracy Matter for Women’s Rights?Just Debate and Democratic Transition in Chile and South AfricaDenise M. WalshAbstractGender scholars have found that democratization is rarely associated with advances in women’s rights and offer a range of reasons why. This article offers a new explanation that targets the quality of democracy in the leading institutions in the public sphere. The author argues that open and inclusive debate conditions, or women’s access, voice, and capacity for contestation in the legislature, civil society, and the media, enable them to shape debate content and pressure the state to respond with legislative reform. The author tests this claim through a structured, focused comparison of Chile and South Africa during the period prior to the transition to democracy, when the public sphere expanded and debate conditions were dynamic. The author finds that different levels of openness and inclusiveness coincide with different outcomes in women’s rights. This suggests that the quality of democracy in the public sphere shapes women’s rightsand that it may shape the outcomes of rights for other marginalized groups and in long-standing democracies as well. Chile democratization deliberative theory gender public sphere quality of democracy South Africa women’s rights

Opposition Parties and the Urban Poor in African DemocraciesDanielle ResnickAbstractAfrica’s urban poor increasingly represent a key constituency for electoral mobilization. Opposition parties, which are pivotal for democratic consolidation, have nevertheless exhibited disparate success at obtaining votes from this constituency. To explain why, this study focuses on the case of Zambia and draws on interviewswith political elites as well as a survey of informal sector workers in Lusaka. Instead of vote buying, ethnic alignments, or economic voting, these data show that the urban poor’s voting decisions are related to the strategies used by political parties to incorporate them into the political arena. Opposition parties that employpopulist strategies are more likely to win support from the urban poor than parties reliant on alternative modes of mobilization. The advantages of a populist strategy include greater differentiation from the myriad of purely personalistic parties in Africa and greater congruence with the policy priorities of the urban poor, including service delivery and jobs. Africa democratization opposition parties populism urbanization voting behavior

The Knowledge to Act: Chinese Migrant Labor Protests in Comparative PerspectiveJeffrey BeckerAbstractHow do workers in authoritarian states engage in protest, and how do they choose from available protest strategies? Through analysis of Chinese migrant labor protests from 2007 to 2008, the author examines how structural changeexpanded opportunities for protest and how migrants took advantage of those opportunities. Where formal organization is prohibited, informal ties facilitate protest by providing material support and information. Although traditional kinship ties provide material support, urban ties between workers with no connections before migrating to the cities provide information. Workers with access to urban ties are both more likely to engage in protest and more likely to engage in nonviolent protest through informal bargaining or the legal system. Little is known about the process of collective action among workers in authoritarian states, and understanding howChinese migrant workers engage in labor protests despite prohibitions on formal organization sheds light on this phenomenon. protest contention social ties migrant labor authoritarian states

Interest Group Influence in Authoritarian States:The Political Determinants of Chinese Exchange Rate PolicyDavid A. Steinberg and Victor C. ShihAbstractWhy do countries keep their exchange rates weak and undervalued? This article argues that domestic politics is more important than systemic factors, but existing domestic political explanations do not fully explain how interest group preferences and political institutions influence exchange rate policy. The authors argue that tradable industries do not always demand an undervalued exchange rate, but do so only when they are unable to receive other compensatory policies. In addition, interest groups have a larger impact on exchange rate policy in nondemocraticregimes than is often recognized: Autocrats select exchange rate policies that correspond to the preferences of the most powerful interest groups because lobby groups have access to the political process and leaders are sensitive totheir preferences. A case study of exchange rate policy in China supports these arguments. The major decisions to maintain an undervalued exchange rate in China were taken in response to demands for undervaluation from tradable industries. Second, the case study shows that exporters’ preferences for undervaluation ebb and flow with the policy mix: Tradable firms lobbied for an undervalued exchange rate when no other compensatory policies were implemented, but they did not insist on undervaluation in periods when they benefited from other state policies. The authors conclude that China keeps its exchange rate undervalued because the interest groups that support undervaluation are more powerful than those that oppose undervaluation. These findings indicate that interest groups influence exchange ratepolicy in authoritarian regimes, but their preferences for undervalued exchange rates are quite malleable.